


All This Useless Energy!

by goodmourningdove



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Midlife Crises, Mutual Pining, Overthinking, Romantic Comedy, middle aged roommates, mutually terrible decisions, post-Derry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:27:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25757353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodmourningdove/pseuds/goodmourningdove
Summary: “I mean,” Eddie said, shrugging. “You did the whole celebrity party scene, right? You’d be familiar with where to, I mean, you know.” Richie didn't know, but he had a good guess.“What?” he asked. “I mean, yeah, man, I’ve been to parties, but not like—I did coke, like, twice. In 2003. I’m a standup, not a founding member of the Pussy Posse.”“I know that—”“Believe it or not, I don’t have Leo’s number. I couldmaybeget ahold of Harmony Korine, but that’d be a big ask.”Eighteen months after Clown Murder Take 2, Richie and Eddie find themselves in different flavors of the same problem. They've both made some big life changes in the last year, but it feels like there's something missing. The only viable solution, obviously, is to try and kickstart their midlife crises together.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 13
Kudos: 30





	All This Useless Energy!

It was 10:13 am on February 23rd, 2018 and Richard Tozier was late for a meeting. Not, like, “just call the whole thing off” late, but still “kind of rude and I know that’s your schtick but you’re also supposed to be some kind of professional, aren’t you?” late. Diet late. Late zero. Late lite. 

But still. Late. 

Which was fine, was cool, was chill, probably. He’d had a good year, give or take a few weeks, give or take a few sessions sobbing into the arm of his therapist’s couch. A good year professionally, at least, because leave it to Richie to have two meltdowns in as many months and somehow make the second one a career re-defining “ _tour de force”_ (to quote the _Variety_ article he felt super weird about having been interviewed for in the days following). 

In any case, he was absolutely going to be late and was absolutely going to be getting a “talking to” over it. And (barring one notable and not unsexy exception), he hated getting a “talking to” the way any grown ass man would hate being berated by another grown ass man. It was an incredibly minor crisis, so Richie did what he’d done for minor crises the first eighteen years and last eighteen months of his life: he called Stan.

Stanley, bless his heart (in the real way, not in the Georgia Way that Stan had probably found himself used to), picked up quick, not letting the phone ring longer than three times before answering with:

“What’d you do now, Richie?” Which was rude, because Richie hadn’t done anything. Not doing anything was part of his problem, actually, because he didn’t do several things that got him into his current situation. He didn’t set his alarm (whoops, but it happened, debatable whether this was really his fault), he didn’t account for this much traffic on Lake Shore (that one was on him, he’d lived in LA half his life and had been back in Chicago for a year, he should have known better than to underestimate traffic but Richie should have known better than a lot of things, it was his brand, almost), and now what he wasn’t doing was being on time to his meeting with his manager, who had been kind enough (and having a surplus of frequent flyer miles enough) to fly out from Los Angeles to talk out Richie’s “next steps” in person. Richie didn’t know what Steve had planned to talk about with him and why it couldn’t have been done over the phone, like most of their interactions since Richie put California in his rearview, but he didn’t _want_ to be late for it. 

Or, he didn’t want Steve to be annoyed with him. Steve liked to hold onto annoyance as long as he could carry it (he was very good at carrying it) and Richie barely liked him when he was in a decent mood. Avoiding that was key. That was where Stan came in.

“I’m meeting with Steve this morning,” Richie said by way of greeting. He and Stan were never ones to ever actually greet each other formally; when you know someone long enough (and then lose them and then very nearly re-lose them forever) you get straight to the point.

“Okay?” Stan answered. “Did you want me to pump you up for it or something? Is that what this is? I’m working, you know? Tax season’s coming up?” He was quiet for a moment before speaking again. “You do know tax season is coming up, right?” Richie didn’t know that, but he, like, had people for that.

“I have people for that,” Richie said and Stan’s eye roll was nearly audible over the phone. 

“For what? Being your cheerleader or remembering your taxes?”

“Both, Staniel, I’m a celebrity.”

“Pfft, _people._ Who, Eddie?”

“Mm, very funny. I didn’t move him in to be my financial advisor.” He heard Stan take a breath and cut him off. “Or my cheerleader.” Even though, since moving in six months previous (Eddie needed somewhere to stay while a whole divorce happened to him and had been desperate to leave New York; Richie had been desperate to not live so alone anymore and needed to be able to see Eddie, whole and in front of him, on the reg), Eddie _had_ indeed taken on those roles. But, like, just a little bit. It was nice to have someone to help him budget or come watch him test out new material. Yeah, the fact that it was Eddie doing these things made them more than just that, made them heavier, made them hang on his heart like barnacles or something just as gross and impossible to scrape away. He’d come to terms with that. Stan pointing it out was just, well, bitchy. 

“Anyway,” Richie continued, “he wasn’t around this morning.” Richie had been sad at that, he really could have used one of Eddie’s patented Don’t Fuck This Up backpats on his way out the door of their shared Andersonville apartment. “He’s, uh, meeting with his lawyer today. This is it, I think.” Richie pulled into the parking garage closest to the chic little downtown brunch spot where Steve had decided they would meet. He slid his car into a spot easy enough (a little crooked, but he probably wouldn’t get swiped) and hopped out of the car.

“Shit, Rich, really?” Stan asked.

“About time, right? Yeah, I think it’s final signatures and everything,” Richie said, as if he hadn’t heard Eddie rant about the process in explicit detail over and over again for the last half-year. Richie rolled his shoulders and locked the car. “Then our Spaghetti is a free agent. He won’t be able to keep the single ladies of Chicago out of his crisp, ironed slacks.” 

“Hm,” Stan said. “Gross.” Richie barked a laugh. 

“Anyway,” Richie said, “I just need to be on the phone with you when I get to Steve. Got it?” Richie exited the parking garage, bundling his coat around him. He glanced at potential oncoming traffic before pulling a kitty-corner jaywalk that he knew would have driven Eddie nuts, but Richie was a man on the go, and sometimes safety takes a backseat when you’ve got shit to do. 

“Are you…?” Stan trailed off. “Are you using me as an excuse to be late to a meeting?” Richie shrugged to no one, still holding the phone close to his ear as he made his way down the sidewalk, weaving in and out of the other pedestrians, narrowly dodging an old woman’s grocery cart. Walking fast did nothing to protect against the frigid wind, and it was doing a number on his face.

“Well, yeah. I mean—and this is gonna sound real shitty, man, here me out—Steve knows about your, uh, your aborted escape mission. It’s, like, a third of what my second freak out was about. So he gets real worried over anything that could be ‘at-risk.’”

“Oh, wow, a whole third?” Stan sighed. “I’m not ‘at-risk.’ There were extremely mitigating circumstances.”

“Yeah, space clown circumstances,” Richie said, and gasped. “Oh shit, that’d be a killer band name. Stan, we’re starting a band.” Stan didn’t respond and Richie rolled his eyes himself, stopping in front of the restaurant and slipping in the front door. “And obviously Steve doesn’t know about that part.”

“I really want to be disgusted but this _is_ kind of clever. For you.”

“For me? Remind me who was salutatorian again?”

“Not you, because you didn’t get to walk at graduation. Anyway, I said ‘clever’ not ‘smart.’ You’re one of the smartest people I know, somehow, Rich, but you’re also dumb as shit. Why didn’t you just call him to let him know you were running late?” 

“Hahaha, you really are so funny, Stan,” Richie laughed heartily as he approached Steve’s table in the back corner of the restaurant. “You just, um, you keep on keepin’ on, man. Stay strong.” He hung up the phone, thinking about how he should probably call Stan for real soon, and set it down on the tablecloth as he slid into his seat. He smiled and shrugged at Steve from across the table, in a _whelp, what can you do?_ Gesture.

“Whatcha got for me?” Richie asked, unwrapping the straw next to the glass of Diet Coke Steve had been so kind as to order ahead for him. 

“What don’t I have for you, Tozier?” Steve said, spitting nonsense with the kind of confidence and semi-sleazy Hollywood sheen that made it all feel like it somehow made sense. Or, he used to, at least, when Richie was shiny and new to LA, all young, dumb, and full of bad jokes about cum. Decades on, however, after Richie had gone through the showbiz wringer, and then re-ran through the Derry wringer, Richie knew too much shit about too much shit to believe half of the pretty words that came out of his manager’s mouth.

“Straight answers, it sounds,” Richie said, and laughed when he caught his own choice of words. “Hey, get it? Get it? No straight answers?”

“I’ve got options for you. Choices.” Steve didn’t acknowledge the joke. Richie sighed.

“Yeesh. C’mon, man, decision making? Isn’t that what I got you for?” he asked, poking at an ice cube with his straw.

“And I’ve tried to make decisions for you, but you keep wheedling your way out of them. You’ve done jack shit for the last year. You know you can’t coast on one success forever.” Christ, this really was gonna be one of those, wasn’t it? 

“Aw, c’mon, let me coast,” Richie feigned a whine, “I’ve been real good at coasting, look at me.” Steve didn’t respond to that, instead picking up his phone to scroll through it.

“I know you said ‘no,’—” Shit. 

“Steve.” 

“—but there are still studios out there looking to buy the rights to your, uh, your story.”

“It’s a not a story, it’s my fucking life,” Richie said, much too loud, sending a ripple of commotion through the neighboring tables. Steve looked at him, eyebrows raised. Richie cleared his throat. 

“They can work with that. It’ll be like, uh, _Sleepwalk with Me,”_ Steve tried.

“And like _Sleepwalk with Me_ , no one’s gonna fuckin’ see it. And I doubt the producers of _This American Life_ will want anything to do with my material.” Richie tapped his fingers on the top of the table.

“Think it through, Rich. It could tear up the indie circuit. Birbiglia’s got film roles out the ass these days.” Richie didn’t know if that was true, but he wouldn’t have put money on it. In fact— 

“Birbiglia played the, the basketball coach in _Seventeen Again_. I’m not gonna bare my soul when the best possible outcome is playing seventh fiddle to Matthew fucking Perry.”

“That was Gaffigan, I think.”

“I rest my case.”

“Then tell me. What else are you going to do?” Steve asked, gesturing stiffly. “Are you even writing new material? Workshopping anything? I mean, Christ, when’s the last time you were even on stage?” Richie didn’t have an exact date on it (he didn’t have a google calendar, he wasn’t Stan), but it had been a while. Fans on Twitter, he’d seen (when the idea of opening Twitter didn’t make him nauseous) kept referring to him being “on hiatus,” which was news to him. He’d mostly just sort of stopped doing his job and then just kept not doing his job. If he was pressed to think about it, like really think about it, like his therapist wanted, it would all boil down to one thing: he was just kinda sick of being looked at.

“Podcasts are super en vogue lately,” Richie suggested. “Could do that. I could have what Maron has.”

“No, you really couldn’t,” Steve sighed. “Just think about it. I’ll email you some contacts. Fuck, Rich, I’ll email you an itemized list of choices. Shut your eyes and point for all I care, but you’re going to do one of them. Now order some fucking food, the server keeps looking over here and I’m not staying in this freezing shithole any longer than I have to.” 

* * *

It was 10:13 am on February 23rd, 2018, and Edward Kaspbrak was early for a meeting. Not super early, not “run and grab a coffee early”, but early enough to stand around the office space his lawyer had told him to meet in and try not to pace. Try very hard not to pace.

Pacing the room, Eddie pulled his phone out of his pocket, unsure who to actually call about this. He was anxious, which was typical, that was what he did, being anxious. But it was a different flavor of anxious. More anticipatory. Almost good.

Good. 

God, it might just feel good.

Eddie, and he didn’t think he’d ever live it down if anyone else knew this, had bought a special pen for the occasion. A very nice pen. One of those smooth, couple hundred dollar motherfuckers that you had to fill with, like, actual ink. He’d practiced writing with it, getting his signature down pat, nice and neat and smudge-free. The perfect signature as the perfect stamp on the (hopefully perfect, otherwise what the fuck was his lawyer for) paperwork to bring to a close the least perfect period of his life. 

He wished he could have talked to Richie before he left this morning, but Richie was rarely seen out of bed before nine and Eddie left too early so he could give himself too much time to get where he was going.

It wasn’t that Richie was a master of pep talks, even considering the Braver Than You Think spiel, he was pretty shit at it. It usually worked though, and Eddie was missing whatever semi-insulting talk he could have been given this morning. 

Bill, he considered, was an option. Bill had been his go-to through most of growing up, who he looked to when there was a problem that needed solved. His plans and solutions weren’t always good, or really all that effective, but they were always extant, which was what mattered when Eddie had thought himself half to death. Where there was a will, Bill found a way. 

He typed out Bill’s number, nervous fingers fumbling across the screen and making him retype (of course he had Bill’s number memorized, he had all of his friends’ numbers down pat, just in case, just in case, except for Stan’s maybe, but that was only because he regularly changed it on a whim when he’d get sick of robocalls, and, anyway, he could usually be reached through Patty, whose number Eddie absolutely had memorized, but, Jesus Fucking Christ, Kaspbrak, that was not the point—) until he thought better of it, gave up, and typed out Bev’s number instead. 

Bev and him had grown closer since leaving Derry that second time, if only because it was indescribably comforting to find out he had so much in common with another person (mostly bad things in common, yeah, but that upped the comfort factor of it all, being able to relay some Fucked Up Shit and have someone there to say “yes, yes, I get it, I understand;” it was different with Richie with whom he had more (arguably) good things in common but could still listen to the bad and say “no, I don’t get it, but I’ll listen and not make fun of the really serious stuff and still make fun of the rest;” still good, of course, but not the same). So he and Beverly got to be what they called, in a necessary effort to lighten the fucking mood of the whole thing, Divorce Buddies. They were also Fucked Up Childhood (Even Leaving Out the Clown Thing) Buddies and Tendency to Fall into Familiar, But Harmful Patterns Buddies, but those didn’t flow as well.

“Today the day?” Beverly asked as she answered the call, as if she didn’t already know, as if she hadn’t been texting him a daily countdown since he and Myra and their respective lawyers decided on a date and time. 

“T-minus forty minutes,” Eddie answered, glancing down at his watch’s display. “I showed up way too fuckin’ early and now I’m pacing this conference room. I’m sweating, like, I’m gonna sweat through my shirt. I’m gonna sweat through my fucking jacket. I’m gonna sign my,” he took a breath, “I’m going to sign my divorce papers looking like Richie on _The Late Late Show_.”

“And he’s not even there to defend himself,” Beverly tsked.

“Yeah, yeah, he had ‘food poisoning’ and Corden refused to reschedule—what a dick—then he threw up in the green room on ‘accident’ and got billed a cleaning fee. I’ve heard the excuses, Bev, he still looked like shit. And I look like shit. And he couldn’t come here anyway, he has a Steve meeting. And even then he— Could he have come with me?”

“Bringing your middle-aged roommate with you to sign your divorce papers?”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

“Might make Myra rethink the no fault part of this divorce.” Eddie’s heart gave a stuttering leap, knowing that Bev was just joking with him, but it still made him anxious. Eddie was aware that this whole set-up he had with Richie wasn’t normal. Most people don’t just go into a panic, file for divorce, and flee halfway across the country to play house with their newly-reunited and newly-out childhood best friend. He knew the optics on that weren’t, like, _great_ , and he’d had to field a not insignificant amount of questions from Myra’s lawyer about the nature of his and Richie’s relationship. Which Eddie answered as truthfully as he could, at that point. As truthfully as he could without having to examine any part of himself any closer than he absolutely had to. They were best friends. Eddie needed a support system. Richie was available. Richie just happened to be, now, very publicly gay and that had nothing to do with Eddie outside of his being supportive of his friend. Done and done. 

That, of course, was several months and two new therapists ago. Things had become increasingly less simple the longer Eddie had been living with Richie, but he wasn’t about to go spilling all those really fun details about realizing things and recognizing emotions unless he wanted Myra to realize some things of her own and further complicate this endless fucking divorce. It was fine. 

“Funny. Very funny. I’m laughing, can’t you hear it?”

“I mean, Ben came with me to sign mine, so.”

“Sorry, I’m having trouble hearing you. See, I’m just laughing so fucking hard.” Bev giggled at him.

“Yeah, alright, alright,” she said, voice softening. “Take a breath, Eddie. This is happening. Just some papers and a handshake with your lawyer and you don’t have to even think about it again if you don’t want to.”

That was true. True enough, at least. He even had his alimony payments set up as a direct deposit, so he wouldn’t even have to write Myra’s name on a check. She was moving, he’d heard, to somewhere deeper in the Midwest, the real Midwest, not like his and Richie’s humble (but refreshing) Chicago lifestyle, but like, _Missouri._ She was moving somewhere Eddie wouldn’t even think to visit or even drive through, if he could help it, so chances were high that he could go the whole rest of his life without seeing Myra Kaspbrak (yes, she kept the name, Eddie didn’t care, she could have it) again. 

It wasn’t that he was afraid of the woman herself, because he wasn’t. As much as Richie joked (and there was much, much, too much joking) about Myra being the sequel to his mother (“Mrs. Kaspbrak 2: Another Mother,” said in Richie’s unfortunately adept announcer voice), it wasn’t all that accurate. His mother had been, well, what she had been (his therapist liked to use “abusive” and, while Eddie agreed with her, he didn’t like saying or thinking about it if he could help it). Myra had just been very, very good at helping Eddie lean into his worst fears and habits, and he was very, very good at doing the same for her in turn. But then one thing led to another and he got his brain de-clown-fucked and he became less and less good at meshing with his pre-Derry lifestyle because he became less and less good at being the person he’d spent the past decades trying to be. 

Myra claimed the divorce came out of nowhere, but Eddie knew she wasn’t stupid, she just didn’t like it and therefore decided that it wasn’t supposed to happen. That had been the long and short of the whole marriage, really, just a long timeline of mutually-assured delusion leading to an Eddie-assured destruction. Kaboom. 

“I know,” he said. 

“Let me hear some enthusiasm,” Beverly urged him on and Eddie smiled at it. 

“I’m ready,” he said, seeming to appease Bev when he heard her _whoop!_ on the other line. He ruined it, however, when he followed it up with: “I’m just…”

“Just what?” Beverly was gentle in her asking, although Eddie just knew she had to be getting sick of his wishy-washy, anxious bullshit. He was more than sick of it himself. And anyway, he didn’t really know how to answer her.

Just what? 

Just what?

Ugh, he didn’t _know_. This was all so fucking weird. Unexpected. All something that, two years ago, he hadn’t even considered to be within the realm of possibility. 

He was getting divorced. Holy shit. It was old news, of course, because this had been a long process that had thoroughly kicked the shit out of him. He would have thought that he’d had the actual shit kicked out of him enough to warrant some kind of break on the more metaphorical kind of shit-kicking, but he’d have been wrong about that. But this was the real and actual doing of it. Starting today, Eddie Kaspbrak was officially a single man.

Which was hilarious, in and of itself. Eddie had never really embraced the single man’s lifestyle even when he’d been the age it had been expected of him. He’d been too busy then, in his early twenties. Busy with school, with internships, with being scared (scared in general, of course, that was his resting state, but also scared of more specific things; things he remembered or didn’t remember or almost remembered and couldn’t quite put his finger on). 

“It’s just weird,” he said, finally. “All of it? I think? Like, this whole thing has been a huge pain in the ass and now it’s just gonna be done.”

“That’s the beautiful thing about it, Eddie,” Bev said. “You get to leave that in the past, do something new. You’ve just busted open a whole new part of life. Go forward, explore.” Bev hummed an approximation of the _Jurassic Park_ theme, out of tune but recognizable.

“I know, I know,” Eddie nodded. “I just have a lot of, I don’t know, decisions? A lot of decisions to make? I mean, what do I even do now? I mean, all this free time, just thinking about it has me jumping out of my fucking skin.” 

“Decisions you now _get_ to make. You got this,” Bev said. They were silent for a moment, and Eddie was comforted just from Beverly being on the other line. “Hey, Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Proud of you.”

“Thanks, Bev,” Eddie said. There was a knock on the frame of the door behind him and he swung around to find his lawyer, looking rumpled with her bag thrown over her shoulder and two to-go cups of coffee in her hands. “Shit, it’s time,” Eddie said to Bev.

“Alright. Good luck. Love you,” she said.

“Love you too.” Eddie hung up. 

“You ready?” his lawyer asked, setting one of the coffees down in front of him and reaching into her bag to grab folders full of documents.

“As ready as I’m gonna get.”

* * *

Richie got home before Eddie did that evening, and he tried not to feel weird about it, because it wasn’t. It _wasn’t._ It was just that, well, he hadn’t seen Eddie at all that morning either, and then he wasn’t home when Richie got home, and he hadn’t had a phone call all day. Which was fine, because he hadn’t even been gone that long.

It wasn’t a co-dependant thing. It _wasn’t._ For one, Eddie was perfectly fine without Richie. Bam, that knocks the “co” right out of there. And Richie himself wasn’t dependent either. He just got a little antsy, sometimes, when he hadn’t seen Eddie in a while. Yeah, yeah, it’d been well over a year since Eddie played chicken with the spectre of death and somehow came out of it alive and, more or less, in one piece, but _still._ It was worth getting a little nervous over, he had a pretty consistent record of losing Eddie. And it was fine, it _was,_ his not being home. It gave Richie time to decompress from his shitty meeting and throw himself down on the couch to decide which of the five restaurants they frequented they should go to that night in celebration of Eddie’s now legally binding freedom. 

He didn’t have long to just hang around, however. Richie had just begun scrolling back through the menu of their favorite Thai place when he heard Eddie’s keys in the door and scrambled up off the couch to go scare him. Eddie pushed open the door and Richie jumped in front of him, yelling (way too loud, he knew, their neighbors were going to be pissed and he was already on thin ice with the Kleins downstairs from his and Eddie’s regular shouting matches) in a half-formed Voice: “Welcome to the single life, Monsieur Kaspbrak!”

Eddie didn’t jump or scream, he just frowned, brows furrowed. Cute, in that worn, middle-aged way that didn’t make any sense but worked for him. And, _god_ , did it _work_ for him.

“Cute try,” he said, and Richie scoffed. “But if you’re going to scare me, don’t stomp across the living room on your way to do it, dipshit. You’re not sneaking up on anyone if you’re just gonna bigfoot around like that.”

“Oh, well, Eds,” Richie swung an arm around his shoulders, leading him out of the hall and into the living room. “You know what they say about men with—”

“No.” Eddie twisted away from Richie’s arm and out of his reach. 

“Really? Because you might not have heard. See, the thing they say—”

“No, knock it off, Rich, I’m in a good mood and I’m not letting your— your— your _dick shit_ get in the way of it.” Eddie seemed to realize what he had said after the fact, far too late to take it back, and Richie was far too excited about it to let it slide.

“My _dick shit?”_ Richie cackled. Eddie glared at him, or tried to, anyway, because an icy stare was really hard to sell when he couldn’t keep the grin from spreading across his face.

“Yes,” he pushed, “your,” Eddie started to break, “your,” oh, he was definitely going to break, “d—” yes, yes, here it was, “ _dick shit_.” Eddie snorted and Richie’s heart caved in on itself, chest tight. He reached back out to pull Eddie into a real hug, this time. 

“Really,” Richie said. “Congratulations, man. You did it.” Eddie nodded against his shoulder.

“Yeah, I know. Thanks.” He looked up at Richie without pulling away, and Richie wasn’t going to think too hard about that, if he could help it. “We’d better be celebrating, it’s been a fucking _day_ , dude.” Richie pulled back, going to throw himself back down onto the couch.

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Eddie sat down on the other end of the couch.

“Meeting not go okay?”

“Hm?” Richie shrugged. “Nah, man, it went fine. You know how it is. Exposure this, ratings that, something something audience engagement. Just typical Steve shit. Hollywood shit.”

“Oh, wow, _Hollywood shit_ ,” Eddie mocked. “Look out for Mr. Hollywood, and his _Hollywood shit._ ”

“Hey, fuck off, Lord Wallstreet, or whatever the fuck it is you do. Banking? Don’t tell me, I don’t care,” Richie changed the subject. “Anyway, I was going to take you anywhere you want tonight, out of the goodness of my Hollywood wallet, but if you’re gonna be an ungrateful little shit about it, I’m gonna have to reconsider.” Eddie scoffed at him. “Yeah, alright. Fine. What do you want? Thai? Indian? That one farm-to-table place you get all horned up over?”

“No, gross, I don’t—”

“Hell, I’m so proud I’ll even cook for you, if that’s what you want. I will go to Trader Joe’s and walk out with salmon, just for you. Or maybe the Mariano’s, it’s closer. Tell me I don’t have to go to Trader Joe’s.” 

“Honestly? I’m wiped, man. I just want to stay home. Can we just get take out or something?” _Home!_ Richie loved it when he called their apartment _home_ , like _yes! You live here! With me! We live here together!_ Richie didn’t share a lot with other people; it was nice to have something he could say _ours_ about.

“Fuck yeah, we can,” Richie whooped, grabbing his phone to return to searching through menus. “Divorcee’s choice, what are we getting?” Eddie was quiet for a few moments, visibly thinking, considering his options, and Richie loved to see it.

“I want gyros,” he decided, and Richie whooped again. It was a whooping kind of night.

Hours later, after the hummus, and feta fries, and tzatziki sauce had been cleared off the coffee table, Richie and Eddie lounged around the living room, Eddie somehow taking up most of the couch and Richie sprawled on the floor, sipping some gross, craft IPA Mike had sent them from his adventures in the Pacific Northwest, and not paying attention to the episode of _Deep Space Nine_ playing on the tv. 

Richie took a swig of his beer and grimaced. “This really sucks. Like, hand-to-god, I’ve never tasted piss, but if I had to guess—”

“No, no, same, hand-to-god, but you’re right,” Eddie agreed, taking another sip anyway. “Thanks, Mikey, we appreciate the gesture, but did you taste this before you sent it our way?”

“Maybe he’s just trying to get rid of it and we’re the poor saps he knew would take it off his hands.”

“And of course we won’t say anything to him about it. I’m not gonna, not fuckin’ gonna look a Mike gift in the mouth. He put thought into this, right?”

“Of course he did. He could have,” Richie thought of something funny, so he chuckled his way through saying it, “he could have just sent t-shirts. Just, ‘my long lost best friend midlife-crisis-ed across the country and all I got is this stupid t-shirt’.” Eddie laughed.

He stretched his shoulders and leaned back into the couch, Richie watching the pull of his shirt across his arms. “Thank fuck my midlife crisis didn’t involve buying souvenirs. Could you imagine?”

“Uh, midlife crisis? What midlife crisis? Dude, you haven’t had a midlife crisis.”

“The fuck do you mean?” Eddie asked, so plainly offended that Richie laughed at it from his spot sprawled against the foot of the couch. “I just got divorced, literally,” he glanced at Apple watch that lived near-permanently on his wrist and, to Richie’s pleasure, was very easy to make fun of, “ten hours ago. Bam. There’s my midlife crisis. Done and done.”

“Uh, no? Getting divorced from your mom-wife—”

“Gross, Rich—”

“—doesn’t count as a midlife crisis. That was a, uh, a,” he thought for a moment, when the word came to him, he snapped his fingers, “a come to Jesus moment. It’s gotta be something _big_. Like, shit, dude, you know you almost died, right?”

“Uh, yeah, man, I was there.”

“Okay, barely. You were out of it almost the entire time. Being heavy and ruining my jacket.” Richie wasn’t sure why he brought this up, outside of joking with Eddie about his almost dying giving him the chance to appreciate that Eddie was around to joke about it with. 

“Yes, of course, I’m so fucking sorry, Richie, that I wasn’t compos mentis for my near death experience, I’ll try harder next time.” Richie blew a raspberry at _compos mentis,_ and Eddie’s familiar bitchiness, and tried not to think about there being a next time, or even about the last time. Something something, tragedy plus time, but he should probably have given this one a couple more years. That was all it was. If he waited long enough (and Eddie remained alive and hopefully, _hopefully_ , in sight long enough), the memory would feel less like he was taking a melon baller to his own chest and more like the finely-aged, very funny bit it could be. Probably.

“I’m just saying, Eds,” Richie started back up, suddenly desperate to move away from that and waving away the _don’t call me that_ that Eddie tried to follow it up with. “A midlife crisis should at least, you know, be a crisis. Or at least be, like, fun or something. Your whole,” he waved his hand around, in a vague gesture meant to encapsulate Eddie where he sat on the couch, “thing. It was more like the universe setting shit right, right?”

“Right?”

“Right,” Richie chuckled and a thrum of something too familiar breached the hull of his heart and spread through his stupid, stupid body as Eddie rolled his eyes, bringing a hand up to hide the smirk that couldn’t help but break across his face.

“What about you then?” Eddie asked, readjusting his seat on the couch and crossing his arms, looking bratty, in a uniquely him, middle-aged sort of way. “Where’s your midlife crisis?”

“Uh,” Richie looked at him and then pointed at himself. “Gay?”

“No, nope. Doesn’t count,” Eddie shook his head. “You’ve been gay your whole life, it doesn’t count as a midlife crisis just because you’re— just because you’re getting paid to tell jokes about it now. It was just a regular, ongoing crisis. Yeah, it’s a big deal, but you just stopped lying _and_ you made money off it. Now _that’s_ a ‘come to Jesus moment,’” he said, mimicking Richie’s voice in a terrible (but not wholly inaccurate, to both Richie’s delight and agony) impression of him. 

“Oh, right, right, I forgot making money off something makes it not, you know, life-changing.”

“That’s not what I said. You know that’s not what I said.”

“Sure, sure.”

“So? What? Neither of us has had our midlife crises?” Eddie asked. Richie shrugged at him.

“Guess not.”

“Oh,” Eddie said. “Should we?”

“Should we what?”

“Have one. Should we have a midlife crisis?”

“So we just, what? Go out of our way to, to, crise-ify? Like, what are you gonna do, buy a sports car? Because I’m not giving you my parking spot.”

“No, shut up. No, just. What’s something you’re not happy about? In your life. Figure it out, we’ll just, uh, we’ll just fuckin’ change it.”

Were there things Richie wasn’t fully satisfied about in his life? Well, duh, that was half of being a person, and even more of being a person who was more-or-less half-a-person for more than half their life. But he was also more-or-less fine. Arguably the best he’d ever been since he was twelve, probably, and probably better because himself at twelve wasn’t a moderately acclaimed, moderately famous comedian and didn’t live in a pretty nice Chicago apartment with his best friend. 

But also, of course, worse, because Richie was a moderately acclaimed and famous, middle-aged (and that was a really optimistic way to look at it, if Richie made it to his mid-eighties he’d be as surprised as anyone) comedian with an equally middle-aged roommate. The optics on that weren’t, like, stellar. Were this the mid-century, he and Eddie would have received the lovely euphemistic title of _confirmed bachelors_ , which Richie wouldn’t mind if the euphemism were actually true for the two of them. But it wasn’t. Of course. 

“Dude, it’s your idea, you go first.”

“Oh, um. Okay.” Eddie thought for a second, ideas visibly crossing his face. “I hate my job. I want to quit.”

“Coulda told you that. Okay, man, let’s do it. Draft up your two weeks, turn that shit in Monday and we’ll go from—dude I’m talking to you, get off your phone. Fucking rude.”

“Shh, I’m making a call, so shut it.”

“Now? To who?” Eddie shushed him again. 

“Hello? Mr. Durand? Edward Kaspbrak speaking.”

“ _Edward Kaspbrak speaking,”_ Richie snorted and Eddie shushed him again.

“I’m calling to inform you that I am terminating my employment, effective immediately. Have a good night, sir.” Eddie hung up and beamed back at Richie, bright enough to pierce his stupid heart and almost keep him from making fun of Eddie for his job-quitting strategy. Almost.

“Kind of anti-climatic,” Richie remarked.

“I just quit my job.”

“I know, it’s just. Just, if you’re gonna call your boss up in the middle of the night you should, like, let him have it. Tell him what’s what. Bring the hammer down, like ‘fuck you, I’m outta here,’ or something.” Eddie shrugged.

“Your turn.”

“Jesus, Eds, I don’t know? My whole life has been a crisis, I don’t know how I’m supposed to—”

“Oh, _your_ whole life has been a crisis?”

“Okay, okay, fuck it, fine, we’ll team up or whatever. Eddie, baby, we’re getting old, and I guess we’re gonna run the fuck away from that. Let’s go out.”

“Like… for a jog?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. _Out._ Let’s do it. Let’s party.”

“Tonight?” Eddie asked, glancing down at his watch. Richie felt his stomach shift at the thought of getting up and going anywhere, could feel the telltale signs of coming heartburn and him getting very friendly with a bottle of Pepto. Onions, man.

“Uh, tomorrow maybe?” Eddie made one of his many faces and Richie was pleased that it didn’t look anything like actual consideration. Eddie wasn’t a party person, plain and simple. Richie wasn’t either. Not anymore, anyway. Sure, he’d had his moments in the past, but he was forty. He didn’t have a super solid grasp on his limits but he was, like, aware of them. 

In any case, he knew this was just Eddie getting all hopped up over his freshly official divorce. He didn’t _need_ to have a midlife crisis. Neither of them did, really. It wasn’t obligatory and, even if it were, Richie had always been very good at squeezing his way out of obligations. 

So he’d play into it. Eddie thought he wanted a night out? Alright, then Richie would make him think they were really going to have a night out, Eddie would think too hard about it and decide it was a stupid idea, Richie would make fun of him about it, and then they’d sit on the couch together and Richie could make Eddie listen to his Quark impression. An ideal Saturday night (well, not _ideal_ ideal, but Richie’s ideal Saturday night with Eddie was out of the question, uh, obviously). 

“Alrighty,” Richie said, pulling himself up off the floor to lean into Eddie’s space on the couch. “You better prepare yourself. Tomorrow night we’re going out. And we’re going hard. I’ll plan a whole night, just for you, and you’d better not bitch out.” God, Richie couldn’t wait for him to bitch out. Maybe if he really leaned into it he could get Eddie to call it off tonight so Richie wouldn’t actually have to pretend to plan anything. Perfect. 

Eddie looked at him, not quite frowning, and nodded, firm. 

“Fuck yeah,” he said, which was exciting to hear from Eddie in general, even more so because Richie didn’t really buy it. Fuck yeah. Night on the couch. The most underrated _Star Trek_ series. Premium Richie-and-Eddie Time. The dream.

**Author's Note:**

> heya folks  
> this was meant to be my big bang project and then shit, well. shit broke bad. so i'll be uploading it as i get it done! it's fully planned and about half-written, so 
> 
> anyway 
> 
> title from the song of the same name by jeff rosenstock  
> (i am only allowed to make titles out of songs of former members of bomb the music industry)


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